


anchor

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Growing Up, M/M, Unrequited Love, base of a poem oo, hheh, it is cute and fluffy too i swear just a bit angsty, liam lives right by the sea!!!!!!!!!!, this is a ziam growing up fic because they are the reason i am alive, zayn lives with them during the summer and is very in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:42:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zayn’s like the fire, he thinks for a breif moment. zayn’s like the fire and liam's like the sea and liam can play soflty against him like this in the dim light of the moon but if he wants, he can swollow him whole with just a breath - a wave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	anchor

**Author's Note:**

> check out the poem this was inspired by: 'anchor' by inked-lips on tumblr, and her other poems and fics and her hehehe anyways enjoyy

he is twelve and his name is zayn and he’s walking up the stairs to the porch of the big yellow house with the white fence and the sea behind it, and his big suitcase is hitching it’s way clumsily up the steps behind him.  
it’s his first summer in the big yellow house by the sea and he’s a little scared but mrs payne is a kind woman and she always ruffles his hair like zayns dad used to, just more gently.  
it’s zayns first summer with liam, too. liam is twelve aswell, and has got big brown eyes and short curly hair and thick cheeks and a bubbly laugh. he’s beautiful when he sleeps in the other bed next to zayn and he’s beautiful when he whispers to zayn from the other end of the room “are you homesick, zaynie?”. zayn doesn’t answer, can only let out a shaky uneven too-loud breath, and that’s enough for liam to tassle over the wooden floor and slip down in the bed next to zayn.  
their little room is nice, there’s the two small beds and the drawer where zayn and liam keep their clothes and the old rug on the floor and the white curtains. on liams side, in the ceiling above his bed, there are those stars that shine when its dark. the room is nice, zayn thinks, as liam wrappes his thin arm around zayn and snuggles up against his back. he doesn’t feel so homesick anymore.

it’s zayns first summer in the big yellow house by the sea and it’s the first summer he can swim. when he admited he couldn’t - at the dinner table and ruth and nicola had snickered and chuckled - liam hadn’t made fun of him. he’d just been calm, steady liam with plump cherry lips and a comforting smile you just believe in, and he’d said “i’ll teach you then, zaynie.”

liam does teach him to swim, on the summer afternoons until the sun almost sets in the horisont.  
zayn doesn’t tell liam that he’d rather just sit in the sand (and pick in the pebbles and watch the sun go down and colour the sea a peaceful pink and yellow), he goes along with liam and does as he says, keeps his head above the water just like liam says, and he scrunches his toes and yeah, it’s pretty nice in the salty water too. liams hands are on his stomach sometimes, comforting and steady, soft, on his skin and keeping him from sinking.

they’re twelve and zayn is just learning how to swim, and sometimes they paint down on the beach, and zayn teaches liam how to drag the the brush vertically over the paper with not so much water in the colour, so there becomes small lines and pale spots that lookes just like the waves far away on the sea.  
“wow, zayn, you’re really good at this” he says, fonly, proudly. “you’re teaching me.”  
zayn laughs, that crinkly eyed one that he’s unintentionally copied from liam. “yeah, liam, im teaching you.”

 

they’re twelve and liam is zayns best friend and when they got permission from mrs payne to sleep in the tent down by the beach, between sleeping bags and boy skin and faint smell of sweat and salt and it sounds just like the waves crashing in on the beach when liam says “you’re my best friend, zayn”.  
the summer passes and they lie in the grass, counting the thin lanky strands of hair under zayns arms, “liam you haven’t got any yet!”  
and they eat icecream and liam licks off of zayns and they laugh and their noses brush against eachother and zayn doesn’t know words like exhilariating and radiant and enchanting and intoxicating but that’s what he will come to describle liam as.

theyre twelve and theyre sitting in the woods and they were not really supposed to go here for his mother, but liam said he had a special place to show his best mate in the world zayn. the trees are thick here, and its quite scary but nothings really scary when liam is beside zayn, his fingernail-bitten and dirty hand on top of zayns in the mossy grass between their skinny thighs.  
“isnt it nice out here, zaynie?”  
“yeah, yeah it is.” zayn says slowly. “brilliant.” he smiles but he doesnt meen the place, he means liam.  
zayn is almost twelve and a half when the last days of august blow in over the big yellow house by the sea that he can now swim in, and he is pretty sure his life will never be the same when he returns back home to bradford and school. “offcourse it won’t be the same.” liam snuzzles against zayns neck. “now you’ve got your very own best mate”, and with that he squeezes zayns back and bum closer to his strong, twelve year old front.  
thick tears roll down zayns cheeks when he finally has to say goodbye to liam. his salt-sticky eyelashes brush over liams cheeks as he hugs him. “goodbye, zaynie. ‘m really gonna miss you”  
“thankyou. um. for teaching me how to swim”

 

——

 

they’re thirteen and it’s summer again and zayn’s in volverhampton and they’re painting on the beach and liam hasn’t got any better (liam is a much better teacher than zayn, must be why) and zayn tells liam about how he got suspened from school for fighting a couple of days when some kids were mean to his little sister and he tells liam about how angry his dad was with him but that he doesn’t regret it to this day.  
liam smiles at him, “you’re so brave zayn” but, no, “liam, you’re the brave one.”  
and they’re thirteen but liam still sleeps in zayns bed and he’s got armpit hair now too and there are marks in liams ceiling from when he ripped of the stars once when he was angry. zayn’s never seen liam angry. always soft, always his plump lips slighty pouting and his crinkly eyes smiling.

 

——

 

he is fourteen and his name is zayn and he’s dragging his suitcase up the steps behind him to the porch that feels somehow like home, now. the stairs are worn out, the curtains thinner, the beds smaller. he’s fourteen and liam is fourteen and it’s summer and liam is his best friend.  
they camp out on the beach again, and they’re in a pile of limbs and hairy legs and sticky sweat and sleeping bags and pillows and blankets and liam is asleep and he is so beautiful.  
and zayn doesn’t know words like exhilariating and radiant and enchanting and intoxicating but he knows dazzling and angelic and stunning and he wont ever tell but he wrote liam a poem on the christmas holliday and those words were in it.

 

——

 

zayn is fifteen and liam tells him one day over sunday dinner on the porch that when he grows up he wants to be an airplane builder like his dad. zayn looks at liam and liam looks at him, and zayn feels pround and envious at the same time because zayn doesn’t know what to do with his life at all. he just wants to cling to liam and write poems about him and touch his hair and his cheeks that are not at all as chubby as that first summer, and it scares him a little how even though he fits in in all this, even though he fits in liams big yellow house and even though he owns a little part of liams crinkly smile zayn doesn’t stop him, doesn’t slow him down. cause liam likes zayn but not like zayn likes liam, and liam is not dependent on zayn. liams zayn is the only zayn there is left. if that makes any sense.  
“so what do you want to be when you grow up?”  
zayn snappes out of his hazy daydream, feels liams comforting, warm hand on his thigh, but he can’t think straight.  
“maybe a model?” mrs payne jokes, and ruth and nicola snickers but thy blush too, and “zayn has grown up real handsome hasn’t he, liam darling?” and “yeah, mum”  
and liam is looking at him, steady and not ashamed, a smile stretching out the redness in his lips and zayn takes a bite of his potato, and the soud of a airplane flying by  
somewhere is sound enough, and he doesn’t have to talk.

 

——

 

he is sixteen and his name is zayn and he’s walking up the stairs to the porch of the big yellow house with the white fence and the sea behind it, and his big suitcase is hitching it’s way clumsily up the steps behind him.  
it’s his fifth summer in the big yellow house by the sea and he isn’t scared, knows this is his real home, the small bed and liams legs tangled with his and the beach and the sea and the crabbs they used to fish and the woods and the kitchen table and the attic, and it’s all his home, too.  
liam plays football with him out behind the house, and he lets zayn paint him down by the beach (he’s given up on trying to learn) and the boy on the canvas isnt nearly as gorgeous as liam is, zayn jokes, exept it’s true, but liam laughs and hugs him thanks and hangs up the portrait on the wall of their white little room with the abandoned bed and the non-stars in the ceiling.  
one friday evening liam pulls zayn with him down to the beach, behind the big cliffs, furter than they usually bother going. (“my friends are having a bonfire, it’ll be fun i swear. they’ve got booze and all.”  
“liam, you don’t drink, one kidney, remember?”  
“c’mon zayn, it’s just past this corner here.”)  
and liams friends are nice, zayn supposses. there’s one kid who can’t be more than fourteen, fifteen at most, all curly hair and dimples and naive smile. there are a couple older one’s, one who seems to be attaced to the young boy at the hip or simething, one ginger and one blonde with a guitar, playing loudly and singing and toasting with a wine botle in hand. liam gets that smile, laugh, the crinkly one, and it shoudln’t hurt zayns heart but it does; that smile is his.  
someone puts a beer in his hand and zayn doesn’t want to talk to anyone here really, drinks instead. he clings to liam and glances at him from the other end of the bonfire when someone called grimmy slings an arm around him and pushes him down next to him.

liam can tell the look of zayns face, offcourse, can tell exactly what zayn is thinking about even now when he’s drunk and it’s loud and the waves can’t be heard.  
liam get’s up, draggs zayn along with him to the cliffs further down the beach, because if he’s affectionate sober he is all sorts of things drunk, apparently, and he pushes zayn against the big rock and kisses him. his lips are as cherry plump as zayn always imagined them and his mind is hazy and liam tastes of sharp corona and sprite and it’s not really beautiful but liam is beautiful and his hair is curly at the ends from sweat and his eyelashes against zayns cheekbones are beautiful and the sea is beautiful and the fire is beautiful.

zayn’s like the fire, he thinks for a breif moment. zayn’s like the fire and liam is like the sea and liam can play soflty against him like this in the dim light of the moon but if he wants, he can swollow him whole with just a breath - a wave.

liam takes zayn to the airport about a mile away from the house. he’s a bit drunk but he hops on the bus effortlessly, zayns hand in his, and they brush past the forest and the sea and liams friends until they’re kicked off by the busdriver, laughing and clenching at their stomachs, and lism says it’s not far and you can see the planes take of from here.  
they lay down in the grass, and it’s a bit mossy and wet and it reminds zayn a bit of their place in the woods, but there are no trees here, just fields and the airport in the horizon. when the planes take of and fly through the pink-yellow sky liam explains all he knows about building airplanes.  
“you’re gonna be an exelent airplane builder, liam.” zayn mumbles, ghosting his fingers of liams arm, up and down. “better than your father.”  
“are you sad about your parents splitting?” liam says then, drunkenly, brutaly honest. “y’know. you’re not home anyways”  
and zayns face twist in pain a little, but liams eyes are soft, steady, conforting, promising things he nuzzles into zayns neck later. (“we won’t leave like they do. i’ll never leave you”)  
and that’s enough and this summer is pink-yellow like the sky and zayn loves liam and liam loves zayn, too, and they’re beautiful.  
there’s a liam on liams wall and zayn paints another one to have on his wall too, and they swim in the sea and liam tickles zayns sides and he talks about airplanes and licks off of zayns icecream and suddenly it’s august and zayns father comes to pick him up. his eyes look tired and his smile has fallen apart and liams hug when zayn says goodbye, means a promise. we won’t fall like that.

 

——

 

and then they’re seventeen and then they’re eighteen and and then they’re nineteen and liam is so exited about life and zayn is just him and his dumb painting and his dumb poetry and his dumb graduation and liam is flying to america to learn how to build airplanes.  
zayn is nineteen and he’s in bradford in a tiny apartment with his best mates (he calls them that, now) danny and ant and it smells like smoke and mint and nothing like yellow and pink and cherrys and salt and all that liam smells like, and there are (thank god) no woods here or seas or tents or airports. and liam’s off now, and he isn’t thinking about zayn at all, he’s on bigger airplanes and deeper seas.  
liam taught zayn how to anchor himself, be steady and calm and all that. but zayn has never understood words like exhilariating and radiant and enchanting and intoxicating and he has never really fitted in his own jeans and it’s not easy when your anchor is in amercia.  
zayn thinks (is sure)  
that he’ll always need liam.


End file.
